Cradle of the Gods
by The Evil Author
Summary: The Colonial Fleet find Earth to be far more different that they could possibly have imagined.
1. Prologue: One Shots

**Cradle of the Gods  
****By Nopporn Wongrassamee the Evil Author**

Summary: The Colonial Fleet finds Earth to be far more different than they could possibly have imagined.

Disclaimer: All things Battlestar Galactica belong to Ronald D. Moore and the Sci-Fi Channel. All things Earth were borrowed from other properties and had their serial numbers carefully filed off… which makes them all mine! Bwahaha!

**Prologue: One Shot**s

Sergeant Jeremy Chin, United States Regular Army, spotted his target right away. It wasn't difficult considering that the target was generating a funnel cloud that flung dust and debris everywhere. And barely visible midway up the funnel was the target, the man who called himself the Djinn.

The Djinn was the latest in super powered terrorists to appear in poor Iraq. He was reportedly a Saudi national and member of Al Qaeda, although there were a dozen other stories going around each one contradicting the last. What they all agreed on was that unlike the unpowered insurgents, Djinn disdained going after Iraqi civilians and focused his energies on hitting Americans. His powers let him get away with it because the winds he created swept aside any return fire.

Of course, the Americans weren't going to just stand idly and let some super-villain wannabe kill their troops. That was where Jeremy came in.

Deciding that he needed more height, Jeremy flexed his knees and executed a gravity defying jump to a roof top some fifteen meters above his head. He startled some gawking Iraqi civilians as landed on the rooftop ledge next to them.

'Excuse me," Jeremy said politely to them in Arabic. Then he jumped again, this time across a broad, four-lane street to the top of an even taller building. This rooftop was thankfully free of civilians. Jeremy unslung his Barrett sniper rifle and took up a prone firing position, bringing the Djinn in his sights.

Once upon a time, the United States government would have called upon a private "Hero" or team of heroes to take care of someone like the Djinn. Such persons would almost certainly be a heavy hitter of some sort, and the resulting fight would almost inevitably result in a "win" for the good guys with heavy property damage.

Today, Jeremy Chin was sent in, and he was by no means a heavy hitter. All the same, he was regarded as more than capable of handling the Djinn. And unlike the Heroes of old, he would also be handling it in such a way that would minimize property damage and civilian casualties.

Besides, the U.S. government wanted to make a point that the Djinn certainly wasn't worth any heavy hitter's time.

Drawing on the wuxia training that his Chinese immigrant ancestors had brought to America, Jeremy mind entered a meditative Zen state even as he placed the crosshairs right on Djinn. That felt wrong and Jeremy knew why; the winds would simply sweep his heavy bullet aside. That had to be compensated for, so he tracked left until he just KNEW that his aim was true. The Djinn was no longer even in the scope's sight when Jeremy squeezed the trigger.

The fifty caliber bullet hit the funnel and its trajectory was immediately pulled aside by the high winds. The armor piercing bullet's trajectory curved aside and intersected with the Djinn's center of mass just below the sternum. Bullet resistance was a fairly common ability as super powers went. Of those who had it, a good twenty percent were also resistant to armor piercing ammunition. An even smaller percentage than that were even immune to the heavy round that Jeremy fired.

The Djinn was NOT among that tiny percentage.

The wind funnel died instantly as the shockwave of the bullet's passage blew the Djinn in half.

* * *

A blur of color whizzed by over the cars and busses packing the streets of Chicago. It's passage was marked by a rush of wind and the occasional pedestrian who looked up. Traffic cameras and simple network AIs noted the blur's passage and forwarded the data to local law enforcement where appropriate measures were taken.

In the mean time, the streak of color entered the campus of the University of Chicago and within seconds slipped into an open window. There, the streak slowed down to merely human speeds and resolved itself into a healthy young man who immediately sat in an available seat.

"Good morning, Mister Mathews," the man at the front of the class said loudly. "You're late again, I see."

"Sorry, Professor," Matthews replied awkwardly. What else could he say?

"Yes, I'm sure," the teacher said disdainfully. He turned back to the rest of the class. "As I was saying, discoveries made over the last century have revealed the existence of human colonies taken from Earth and placed on far away worlds by so-called 'gods'. The exact nature of these 'gods' have been and still is a matter of considerable debate…"

Two hours later when Matthews checked his e-mail, he found yet another notification from the Chicago police that he had been issued another speeding ticket.

* * *

"Mrs. Anderson, welcome to Kobol," Doctor Laura Jones greeted. She was an athletic thirty-year-old woman although she looked younger. She was also very well endowed and probably the subject of her male students' fantasies.

"Thank you, Doctor Jones," Karen Anderson replied, shaking the archaeologist's hand. On the other hand, Karen herself was no slouch in the looks department either. She frowned thoughtfully. "Kobol?"

"It's what we think the former inhabitants called this world," Jones replied. "It's Persian for 'sky'."

"Persian? I thought the ruins here were Greco-Roman?"

"They are. We're still scratching our heads on that one," Jones told her. "Would you like to see what we've found so far?"

"Considering that my husband paid for this expedition, I certainly would," Karen replied. She glanced down at Jones' hip. "I'm sorry, but are you actually armed?"

"I find guns to be useful in my profession," Jones said with a shrug. "You never know when you'll run into an Artifact of Power guarded by irate, semi-sentient guards or a fanatical cult. And then there are the greedy bastards who try and rob you after you get the damned things."

"I thought that was why my husband hired a team of security guards for you," Karen said.

"No offense, but I prefer to be able to defend myself," Jones told her sponsor. "What about you? You look pretty good for someone who's supposedly over a hundred years old. Do I even have the right Mrs. Anderson?"

"I'm told you do," Karen replied with a grimace. "I was the subject of an… ah, experimental medical treatment that rejuvenated me."

"Sounds fantastic," Jones replied. "Why haven't I heard of it?"

"It had a nasty little side effect," Karen answered with a sigh. "I can't remember a thing about my first ninety years of life."

"Typical mad scientists," Jones snorted derisively.

"Tell me about it," Karen agreed. She looked around the camp. "So where's Lieutenant Ishita? I thought he'd be here to meet me."

"We detected some kind of aircraft landing nearby," Jones replied. "The good lieutenant's taken some of his security people and gone to go check it out."

"I thought this planet was uninhabited," Karen said, concerned. "Where would aircraft come from?"

"Probably from one of those greedy bastards I mentioned," Jones told her. Her attitude was surprisingly calm, as if this sort of thing happened everyday. For all Karen knew, it did.

"I take it you've had your fair share of thieves?" Karen asked.

"I simply can't go anywhere without tripping over them," Jones said disgustedly.

"I see," Karen said. "In that case, perhaps we should…" Karen staggered as a wave of vertigo hit her along with an unpleasant tingling in her head and extremities. When it passed, Karen found herself being held up by Doctor Jones to keep her from falling over.

"Are you all right?" Jones asked, concerned. "What happened?"

"Jesus Christ!" someone shouted, drawing both women's attention. The speaker was the young MageSoft technician at a bank of monitoring equipment. "Someone's just detonated a _nuclear warhead_ in orbit!"


	2. Issue 1: Who Are These Guys?

**Cradle of the Gods  
****Issue #1: Who Are These Guys?**

"Someone's just detonated a _nuclear warhead_ in orbit!"

For a moment, everyone froze in shock.

"I need details, now!" Doctor Jones snapped at the technician. "Who, what, where…"

"Doctor, we need to pull out," Karen Anderson said quietly.

"What?" Jones seemed startled at the very idea.

"Someone around here is throwing around nukes," Karen explained. "If one gets thrown at us, there's not much any of us can do about it. So the best thing right now is to grab everything you can and get everyone back to Earth."

"We can't pull out," Jones disagreed. She raised a hand to forestall an argument. "Okay, I agree we need to get the noncombatants out, but we can't pull out entirely."

"Why not?"

"Because someone used a nuke," Jones replied. "In my experience, people only employ force at archaeological digs because there's something valuable lying around, probably an Artifact of Power of some sort. Well you don't get much more force than using a nuke, so there must be something REALLY valuable somewhere around here. We need to find out what it is."

"Dammit," Karen said. Unfortunately, what Jones said made too much sense. "Okay, let's get the nonessential personnel out of here. If we're going to hang around people using nukes, then we're going to need some serious reinforcements and fast. I might have to call the government…"

"The government? Why?" Jones objected.

"Because they're the only ones I can think of who have any substantial forces immediately on hand," Karen replied. She quirked an eyebrow as another thought came to her. "Unless of course, you want to call up an Omega or Horseman class super," she added wryly.

"No thanks," Jones said with a slight shudder. "I'd like to keep the damage to the ruins on this planet at a minimum, thank you." She turned to address the people present. "Okay, people. We need to start clearing out of here. Start packing the…"

She was interrupted when some kind of aircraft passed overhead. It was a brick-like affair with sloped front and rear. Karen didn't recognize the design, but that meant nothing. It circled the camp once, then paused in midair to turn and tilt down, presenting only its front face to the camp. Karen realized what it was going to do only moments before it actually did.

"Everyone get down!"

The strange aircraft opened fire with six front mounted machine guns.

* * *

"It's not here," Cally Henderson said.

"What? What do you mean it's not here?" said Lieutenant Alex Quartararo, better known to everyone by his callsign Crashdown. "Socinus is dying. The med kit's gotta be here."

"Oh, gods, it must be back at the crash site," Galen Tyrol said. He was the deck chief for the Galactica, pressed into the job of chief engineer because no one else in what was left of the Colonial Fleet was more qualified. The small party of Colonials had crashed onto Kobol after running into their enemies the Cylons in orbit. They had vacated the crash site in a hurry to escape any Cylon search parties, but it looked like that the most injured surviving member was going to pay the price.

"Well, we can't go back for it," Crashdown said. "The Cylons are going to be all over the place there."

Crashdown was the only surviving officer, and thus he was in charge. Well, there was their illustrious vice president, Gaius Baltar, but he was apparently still in shock and was being led around like zombie. There was no leadership coming from there.

"Sir, Socinus needs that med kit," Tyrol protested.

"I'm sorry, Chief, but I can't risk the whole group for one man," Crashdown replied. "I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is."

"Look, sir," Tyrol tried again. "Let me take a couple people back to the Raptor to get the med kit. That way, we…"

"Uh, Chief? I don't think we're going anywhere," Cally interrupted.

There was the distinct clicking sound of many, many guns being loaded.

* * *

The Heavy Raider opened fire on the human encampment. The presence of the tents and the dozen or so humans below was unexpected, but hardly a concern. Still, humans were the Enemy and the camp was a simple target of opportunity. A single sweep from the Heavy Raider's forward guns would quickly eradicate the infestations.

Or at least, it _should_ have.

Instead, the first burst was met by an unexpected defense. A human female simply and quickly raised a hand and the Raider's hail of bullets bounced off an all but invisible barrier. Bullet impacts on the barrier generated spreading, circular ripples, but otherwise appeared to have no effect.

The semi-sentient Raider pilot reviewed its instructions in the face of such unexpected resistance. Standard procedure was that when in doubt, expend more ammunition. The Heavy Raider fired some more, concentrating on the human that appeared to be generating the invisible wall.

The pilot paid no attention to the human off to the side who was taking aim at the Raider with a rifle of some sort. Surely such a weapon was no threat to an armored Heavy Raider.

So the Heavy Raider made no attempt to dodge when the rocket propelled grenade punched through its nose and detonated right next to the ammunition bin for its guns.

* * *

Crashdown and Tyrol looked around to discover that the entire party was now surrounded by sinister figures materializing out of the surrounding woods. They weren't Centurions; they looked human. But that didn't mean much; these guys could be skinjobs. There were four of them, dressed in clothes and armor dominated by rippling, random splotches of green, black, grey, and brown. They wore helmets with the same color pattern and their faces were partially obscured by what looked like sunlasses. The strangers all held big guns and all the guns were trained on the Colonials.

"Oh, frak no," Crashdown cursed as he pulled his service pistol. "I am not going to be…" Crashdown's words were cut off as he froze in place. No one had shot the officer, but Galen suddenly noticed a sword being held at Crashdown's throat. The sword's owner was a man dressed identically to the other strangers except that he lacked a helmet and held a sword.

In the back of his mind, Tyrol wondered how the hell he had snuck up on them.

The swordsman spoke quietly. Galen couldn't understand a word spoken, but the content was crystal clear. Crashdown apparently agreed; he simply opened his hand and let the pistol fall to the ground.

Apparently satisfied, the swordsman whipped his sword away from Crashdown's throat. His eyes scanned the Colonials quickly and efficiently. When his eyes settled on the prone and critically injured Socinus, he spoke a single sharp word.

At the word, a sixth person materialized out of the woods. The new guy was dressed almost identically, but was only armed with a pistol that remained holstered and was equipped with a few more bags. After a few brief instructions and a finger pointing, the new stranger bent down next to Socinus and began examining him. As he did, Tyrol was surprised when he spotted a shoulder patch which bore a caduceus, the sign of Asclepius the god of healing.

Tyrol suddenly felt hope stirring.

"Who are these guys?" Cally asked no one in particular.

* * *

"Neat trick," Jones observed as the rear half of the aircraft hit the ground just outside the camp with a resounding crash. The front half was raining down around the countryside in itty bitty pieces.

"Thanks," Karen replied as she let the force field drop. She turned to look at the archaeologist. "It's another one of the side effects of my rejuvenation treatment, or so I'm told."

"What does force field generation have to do with rejuvenation?" Jones asked, puzzled.

"Beats me," Karen replied with a shrug. "What do anyone's powers have to do with…"

"LOOK OUT!"

Karen was surprised when Jones tackled her. As they went down together in a heap, a hail of bullets filled the space they had just been occupying. In the same motion, Jones pulled out her pistol and returned fire.

Karen twisted her head around to see a spindly-looking robot go down in a shower of sparks. An identical looking robot disentangled itself from the aircraft's wreckage. It too went down in as Jones and two of the remaining guards showered it with armor piercing bullets. But that allowed a third to get free and spray the camp with gunfire.

Three people were hit before the robot was taken down. Or rather, three people would have been hit. But in a blur of speed, one young man grabbed interposed himself and bodily shielded his companions from harm. The bullets struck him and other than perforating his clothes, did no harm.

More fire from the defenders took down the last robot before it could pick another target.

"Mrs. Anderson, are you okay?" Jones asked, offering a hand up.

"Yes, I am. Thanks," Karen replied as she accepted. "And please, Doctor Jones, you can call me Karen."

"Oh, good," Jones said as she helped Karen to her feet. "I hate formality. Call me Laura. I keep looking around for my grandfather when someone calls me 'Doctor Jones'."

"Alright… Laura," Karen replied. She looked around at the wreckage and shook her head. "Who are these guys?"


	3. Issue 2: Check This Out

**Cradle of the Gods  
****Issue #2: Check This Out**

_Author's Note: Since all the Cylons now have official Number designations, I'm going to go with the canon ones rather than the system I made for the Column. Ie, Cavil is a One, Leoben is a Two, etc etc…_

"Hey, Karen, check this out," Laura said.

"What is it, Laura?" Karen asked as she watched as the camp packed up.

"This is one of the bullets those robots were firing," Laura told her, holding up said bullet. "It's a small caliber round composed entirely of – get this – soft lead."

"A soft lead bullet?" Karen said surprised. "Nobody's used soft lead bullets since… um…"

"The Nineteen Seventies," Laura supplied. "The Sixties were when all the so-called 'bullet-proof' supers began popping out of the woodwork," Laura said pedantically, "but it took a decade before soft lead ammo went entirely out of production due to lack of demand."

"Right, so everyone knows that soft lead bullets are totally obsolete," Karen said. "Why would anyone equip them?"

"I suppose they thought they were only up against base-line humans," Laura guessed.

"Okay, now that's just silly," Karen scoffed.

"Maybe whoever made these robots was a cheapskate," Laura replied with a shrug.

"But everyone knows that supers can pop up anywhere," Karen pointed out. "I mean, look at that student of yours. What's his name again?"

"Clarence Connolly."

* * *

"Ooh, I think I'm going to be sick," Clarence moaned.

"What's the matter?" asked his friend and fellow student Peter Russo.

"I can't stand the site of blood," Clarence told him.

"What this?" Peter asked, holding up his bandaged hand. There was a definite red stain on the bandage. "It's just a scratch. I would have had worse if you hadn't blocked most of the bullets. Speaking of which, how come you never told me you were a super?"

"I didn't want to be treated differently than anyone else," Clarence said uncomfortably. "Besides, it's not like my abilities are of much use in an archaeological dig."

"Unless some crazies with guns try to shoot everyone," Peter added. "So aside from being fast and tough, what other powers you got?"

"Um, just the usual," Clarence mumbled. "Flight, enhanced strength, enhanced senses…"

"You mean like the Apex kids?" Peter asked.

Clarence didn't say anything, but he looked even more uncomfortable.

"Holy crap! You're one of the Apex kids?" Peter exclaimed, awestruck. That knowledge caused Peter to look at Clarence in a new light. The nerdy clothing, dweebish mannerisms, the shy personality… that wimpy front was all classic Apex secret identity!

Apex was the public name of one of the first of the modern public super heroes. He had come from the doomed planet of Neon as a baby. No one knew much about Neon other than the fact that it had been one of those ancient human colonies like Kobol here. The Neonites also liked to name their planets after inert gasses for some reason. The Neonites also understood super powers well enough to pick and choose which ones they got. No one knew anything else about Neonite culture least of all Apex because he had grown up on Earth.

The Neonites had apparently also known how to make super powers inheritable. After his latest death, it had come out in public that Apex hadn't exactly been faithful to his wife. Apex has had lots of kids by other women - although no one was quite sure how many – and they ALL had the same powers. What's more, some of those kids had grown up and had kids of their own, also with the same powers.

"Shh! Not so loud!" Clarence hissed.

"Dude, everyone here SAW you bounce bullets off your skin," Peter told him. "I think your secret's out."

"Yeah, but if they knew I was an Apex kid, they might start asking me to do… things," Clarence said with a shudder.

"Things?"

"You know," Clarence said. "Things like… flying."

"What's wrong with flying?" Peter asked. "You just said you could fly."

"I'm afraid of heights."

"How about just running really fast?"

"Makes me dizzy."

"Super strength?" Peter asked. He looked down at the stone tablets he was packing. "It would be really convenient given the amount of stuff we gotta move."

"I'm a little clumsy," Clarence said. "Heavy stuff makes me lose my balance and then I drop stuff."

"See-through vision?"

"Eyestrain."

"Geez, Clarence, you really are a wimp," Peter said, shaking his head.

* * *

"What's the status on getting your nonessential people out?" Karen asked.

"Our MageSoft technician, Liz, is setting up the connection right now," Laura replied. "I understand it's an involved process."

"You weren't maintaining a constant connection?" Karen asked, surprised.

"Do you have any idea what MageSoft charges for interstellar calls?" Laura asked. "Sorry, but even with your husband's funding, my operational budget isn't THAT high."

* * *

"Welcome to the MageSoft Helpdesk…"

"This is Elizabeth MacKenzie; I'm the MageSoft tech rep at the Laura Jones dig…"

"If you are a new customer, please press one."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"If you are an existing customer, please press two."

"I thought we upgraded to an intelligent operator, dammit!"

"Hey, lady, if you guys wanna use demons instead of expensive, fancy schmancy AIs, you take your chances! Now where was I? Oh yeah. If you are an employee, please press three."

"THREE!" Beep!

"Thank you. If you wish to inquire about your pay information, please press one."

"Look, we have an emergency here."

"Not my problem. If you want to know about upcoming company events, please press two."

"Can't I just tell you who I need to talk to and you just connect me to them?"

"Nope. I have a script to follow and I'm going to follow it. If you would like to leave a suggestion to improve company efficiency, please press three."

"Argh…"

* * *

"By the way, Lieutenant Ishita called in," Laura added. "He's found what he thinks are the survivors of the plane crash. He's bringing them in."

"Are they connected with the nuke or these robots?" Karen asked.

"He doesn't know," Laura replied. "They apparently don't speak any language he understands, and Ishita at least knows all the big languages."

"Huh, that's odd," Karen said, puzzled. "Where on Earth did they come from?"

* * *

"Thank the gods, a break!" Private Seelix said, relieved.

The strange soldiers had been leading the stranded Colonials… somewhere. And the pace they had been pushing was taxing, especially so since the Colonials had to take turns carrying Socinus on his improvised stretcher. And while the Colonials were exhausted, the soldiers hardly seemed winded. Thankfully, the soldiers had noticed the Colonials were dead on their feet and had called for a halt at the base of a small cliff.

Except for the medic, the soldiers paid little attention to the Colonials. Their eyes were constantly scanning the surrounding woods. The swordsman was nowhere to be seen; he had vanished shortly after they had started out.

"Hey, Doc," Crashdown said as he took a seat next to Baltar. The Fleet's sole scientific genius seemed to have gotten over his shock during the walk through the woods. "Any idea who these guys are?"

Baltar turned his head slightly before answering, as if listening to something that only he could hear.

"I can see two possibilities," Baltar replied absently. "One is that they're native Kobolians."

"How can that be?" Seelix asked as she and several other Colonials joined them. Only Chief Tyrol didn't; he was hovering over the medic, watching him work on the injured Socinus. "I thought everyone left to go to the Colonies."

"It's not inconceivable that some people were left behind during the original Kobol Exodus," Baltar said. "God… I mean the gods know that we left behind a lot of people on the Twelve Colonies during our own exodus."

"I don't like thinking about that," Cally said. "Could they be anyone else?"

"I think that would be obvious," Baltar said drolly. The more he talked, the more he seemed like his old self. Whether that was a good or bad thing remained to be seen. "They're either people from Earth," that got positive exclamations, "or they…"

There was a commotion behind some bushes at the top of the cliff. That drew everyone's attention and everyone turned to look up at it. Even the soldiers trained their guns on the disturbance. Then the swordsman and two Centurions popped out from the underbrush in a tangle and fell over the side of the cliff.

In an impossible display of skill and speed, the swordsman used one Centurion as a springboard to cushion his impact with the ground while at the same time he decapitated the other Centurion with a single stroke of his sword. This was immediately followed by a kick that propelled the now headless Centurion away from crashing into the people on the ground. As he landed in a crouch, the swordsman brought his sword down in an overhand chop that split the first Centurion in two from head to groin.

Crashdown's mind balked at trying to figure out how many laws of physics were just violated in front of him.

The swordsman stood up. He answered a query from one of the soldiers with a soft answer. From his tone, the swordsman could have been talking about the weather for all the Colonials could tell.

"Or they could be Cylons," Baltar concluded, his face pale.

* * *

You let her blow up the Basestar," One said accusingly.

"Look, we didn't know that Boomer had detached the nuke from her Raptor," Eight replied. "We thought it was still mounted when we let it go."

"You let HER blow up the Basestar," One repeated.

"Well what if she did?" Eight said defensively. "We gave her instructions to nuke Galactica when she went back. Of course, Boomer doesn't have the nuke anymore, so she'll go to plan B and take out the first human leader she meets. Even then, it'll be worth the loss of a Basestar if she's successful. Besides, the Resurrection ship should have gotten all our brothers and sisters."

"You let her BLOW UP the Basestar!"

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" Eight sighed.

"Um, I like throwing around blame as much as the next Cylon," interrupted Five tentatively, "but we have a more immediate problem."

"More immediate than the loss of our Basestar?" One asked.

"Will you let that go already?" Eight asked in exasperation. She turned to Five. "What's the problem?"

"Several groups of Centurions are reporting encounters with humans," Five explained. Since their arrival at Kobol, the Cylons had deployed a lot of Centurions to explore the various ruins that ancient records had deemed even vaguely interesting. With the destruction of the Basestar, the few humanoid Cylons on the ground had been left in charge by default. Already, they had passed orders to the Centurions to start fortifying their positions. "And soon after they report, the Centurions stopped reporting at all."

"That can't be the survivors from that Raptor," Eight said as she reviewed what little data they had. "Hey, look at this. There's a human encampment not far from where the Raptor crashed. Contact with the reporting Heavy Raider was lost shortly afterwards."

"Damn! That's why the Galactica was heading in this direction," One said in realization. "The humans must have already planted a colony here and that bastard Adama knows it!"

"They must be pretty well armed to take out all those Centurions and the Heavy Raider," Five added, following One's lead. "Our Centurions are spread out all over the planet in small squads. If the humans focus on any one of them, they can wipe out the Centurions piecemeal."

"That's only if we let them keep the initiative," Eight said thoughtfully. She smiled. "Luckily, we have a couple hundred of Raiders who aren't doing anything right now." The Raiders were the survivors of their Basestar, mostly because they hadn't been in the Basestar when it was nuked. "How about we throw them at this camp?"

"Sounds like a plan," Five agreed. "I doubt they have anything that could stand up to that kind of firepower."

"I don't like it," One said. "We can't replace any of their fuel or munitions until one of the other Basestars come back to check up on us. God, why would that be? Could it be because SOMEONE let one of their sisters drop a nuke off in our Basestar?"

"One, just shut up already."


	4. Isuue 3: Good Help is so Hard to Find

**Cradle of the Gods**

**Issue #3: Good Help is so Hard to Find**

_Author's Note: Due to reader feedback, the previous chapter has been edited to improve he prose slightly._

"MageSoft Helpdesk, this is Quinn, how may I be of service?"

"Quinn, thank God! This is Liz."

"Oh, hi Liz! How are you doing?"

"Listen, Quinn, I got an emergency here. Doctor Jones' camp was attacked by an unknown party using robot drones. Doctor Jones thinks that we're going to be attacked again, probably with a heavier force. We need reinforcements."

"Oh, uh, that could be a problem, Liz."

"What? Why?"

"It's crisis season again. Everyone's tied up."

"Everyone? What about our own people?"

"They're dealing with some cult that's trying to summon an Old One."

"What about the Legion? Some of their people were hired as the expedition's security detail."

"They're busy at the Keys Expedition."

"Keys? That's the one on the ring shaped world? What are they up against?"

"Zombie infestation, I think. Very nasty."

"Space Guard?"

"They're dealing with the annual alien invasion. In fact, the invasion's sucked up most of the Omega and high-end Alpha class supers as well as a number of military spec op teams."

"Is anyone available?"

"I suppose I can try and find a Horseman class super."

"Quinn, there's no such thing as a Horseman class super. They're a myth!"

"Of course they exist, Liz. It's just that no one wants to believe that there are people running around that can blow the world away if they sneezed a little too hard…"

"They're a myth! If there really were… Hang on, something's happening."

* * *

The camp was a surprise. Given the effectiveness of the soldiers and the swordsman, Tyrol had been expecting a military base of some sort. Maybe there would have been a ship or two of obviously military design. Maybe there would have been Cylons.

As it stood, the camp was a collection of tents that looked pretty much the same as any tent the Colonials had. The camp was also filled with obvious civilians, none of whom looked like the few humanoid Cylons that the Fleet had so far managed to identify.

That was not to say that there weren't Cylons. Several of the civilians were busy examining wrecked Centurions. They were also going over a nearby wreck in a manner that implied unfamiliarity to Tyrol's experienced eye. So unless this entire camp was a Cylon trick, Tyrol figured that these people weren't Cylons.

There were also a number of untended excavations nearby that looked suspiciously like the kind made by archaeologists. But given the number of people present and the size of the digs, they had to be several years old at least.

Tyrol spotted the swordsman talking to a pair of women who seemed to be in charge. Uneasily, Tyrol wondered how long he had been there. The swordsman had displayed an unnerving ability to appear and disappear when no one was looking.

One of the women, a brunette with her hair tied back in a braid, came over and took Crashdown and Baltar aside. That started a halting conversation where they tried to talk to each other. Unfortunately, her words were gibberish to the Colonials and from her frown, the reverse was also true.

Meanwhile, the swordsman and medic directed that Socinus be placed on a raised stone dais that was in the middle of the camp. The dais was old, obviously part of the ruins. It was cracked and missing chunks of stone at the edges. The weird thing was that the cracks and missing chunks had been patched with shiny metal bits that were obviously just installed. The dais was also largely fenced off with large metal stakes and white tape. Cabling hooked up to the dais ran off to a large metal box which itself had cabling running off in all directions to the tents. One ran off to bank of obvious computer equipment. Tyrol figured the box must be some kind of power generator.

Looking at the dais again, Tyrol couldn't help but feel a sense of nagging familiarity. He had seen this set up before, but he couldn't think of where.

The dais had several impatient looking civilians and a number of boxes stacked on top of it. The civilians there took Socinus's stretcher and place him on a relatively level row of boxes. The medic didn't join them. He even stopped Tyrol from trying to join Socinus on the dais. Tyrol had only just opened his mouth to argue when the familiar double flash of an FTL jump enveloped the camp.

"Holy gods…" someone breathed in awe and shock while Tyrol blinked back tears. He had been staring straight at FTL jump and nearly been blinded.

When Tyrol could see again, the stone dais was empty. The civilians, the boxes, and Socinus were all gone. All that remained was a glowing pentagram surrounded by similarly glowing sigils that covered the dais. Even as Tyrol watched, the glows faded away.

Who were these people?

* * *

"Okay, the first party's gone," Karen said with relief. Laura walked up and joined her. "Any progress on our guests?"

"Call me weird, but I'm beginning to think that these guys aren't from Earth at all," Laura replied. "I think that they might be from one of the ancient human colonies."

"What makes you say that?" Karen asked in surprise. "Every one of those we've run across has been a bit more… exotic looking than these people. What little of their tech that we've seen looks pretty Earthlike to me too."

"It's their language," Laura replied. "They speak some kind of bastardized conglomeration of Achaean, Greek, and Latin with loan words from other Indo-European languages. Not only that, the grammar is completely off, closer to English than any ancient tongue as near as I can tell. It makes understanding anything they say very difficult. I'm pretty sure no one on Earth speaks it, certainly no group with access to the kind of gear these people have."

"Hmm… anything else?"

"Judging from their reactions to what's left of these robots, I think I can safely say that they consider the bots to be enemies," Laura told her.

"That just makes it more imperative that we get answers from them," Karen said thoughtfully. "We need a translator and we need one fast."

"Telepaths?" Laura suggested.

"No, most telepaths need time to learn languages too," Karen disagreed. "And the ones that don't tend to be Alpha class or better. Your tech just told me that all the Alphas and above are currently occupied with other emergencies. However, I know a Beta with a fairly unique talent that would be perfect… assuming her price could be met. Luckily, I have a few credit cards I can max out."

* * *

"Rodney…"

"And now, Mortals, prepare to meet your DOOM!" proclaimed the elemental fire lord.

"Rodney…"

"Bring it on, you Rag wanna-be!" Rodney taunted as charged with sword raised high. "Your evil ends here and now!"

"Rodney…"

The fire lord merely sneered and raised one gargantuan foot to stomp the tiny human when…

SERVER DISCONNECTED

"Noooo!" Rodney Zachariah wailed. He turned to woman holding the now disconnected network plug. "What did you do that for, Eve? Do you have any idea how long it took me to assemble a party for that quest?"

"Oh, please Rodney," Eve Shields snorted in derision. "You're not supposed to be playing games on the company's network to begin with."

"Hey, I'm one third owner of this company," Rodney protested. "Not to mention that I'm in charge of the network to begin with."

"Yeah, and you ought to set a better example for the employees, too," Eve told him. She shrugged and dropped the cable. "Besides, you weren't going to win that fight anyway. Your hunter friend doesn't have a clue how to play his class, the healer was just called away from his keyboard by his mom, and there were a couple orcs sneaking up behind you looking for a few easy PvP kills."

"That's not the point," Rodney grumbled. He was not at all surprised by Eve's seeming omniscience. He'd had years to get used to it after all.

"Whatever. In any case, I have a job and I think I may need a body guard on this one," Eve told him.

"You THINK you need one?" Rodney asked, surprised. "You're not sure?"

"The location's off Earth," Eve said.

"Isn't the off Earth stuff James' bailiwick?" Rodney asked.

"Yeah, but James and his people are off dealing with a zombie infestation," Eve said. "Everyone else is off dealing with one crisis or another. You're the only one left that has Alpha rated firepower or better."

"Yeah, but no one's supposed to know that," Rodney argued.

* * *

"Two hundred Raiders, twenty Heavy Raiders, and a hundred Centurions," One said with a shake of his head. "Why does this seem like overkill?"

"There is no such thing as overkill," Eight replied. "This should be more than enough for that human settlement."

"We'll eradicate the humans from the face of Kobol," Five agreed. "Any who manage to escape… well, there won't be many."

"We're risking most of our forces on this. I can't help but think we're overlooking something," One said. "What if the Galactica suddenly shows up? Our two hundred Raiders aren't going to stand up against it unsupported."

"Don't worry about it, One," Eight said confidently. "I'm sure our sister's mission was successful."

"You should have more faith in God," Five added.

"I'm an atheist," One replied.

"Yes, your loss," Five sighed.

"Okay, are then any last minute VALID objections before we launch the attack?" Eight asked.

"No," Five replied.

"I guess not," One agreed. "Send them in."


	5. Issue 4: The Peanut Gallery

**Cradle of the Gods  
Issue #4: The Peanut Gallery**

"Doctor Jones, Miss Shields and one of her business associates are on their way," the MageSoft tech, Elizabeth, reported. "They'll be at the transit facility soon, and I've managed to secure them priority teleport. They should be here shortly."

"Thank you, Liz," Laura replied. She turned to Karen. "Isn't that great, Karen? Your translator is coming."

"Yeah, great," Karen said, sounding less than pleased.

"What's the matter, Karen?" Laura asked, puzzled. "This was your idea after all."

"You've never met Eve Shields, have you?"

"No, I haven't. Wait, isn't she the CEO of the company that provided me with Lieutenant Ishita and his security team?"

"Yes she is," Karen said, nodding. "Eve Shields is…" Karen groped for an appropriate term. "She's abrasive. She's an arrogant know-it-all who just takes it for granted that she's always right. Couple that with a mercenary money-making instinct… Well, let me just say that I've never enjoyed the few times I've met her."

"Wow, she sounds like a wonderful person," Laura said dryly. "What power does she have that makes it worth calling her in?"

"She's a powerful clairvoyant, the exact specifics of which she's never told anyone," Karen explained. She sighed. "Shields is an arrogant know-it-all because she really does know it all. Or that's what she makes it look like anyway…"

"Doctor Jones?" one of the students called. He was looking at something in the distance.

"Excuse me, Karen." Laura turned to the student. "Yes, Clarence? What is it?"

"There's a bunch of planes coming this way," Clarence said, pointing at the horizon. "Some of them look like the one that attacked the camp earlier."

Eyes flicked in the direction where Clarence was pointing, but Laura couldn't see anything. From Karen's frown, neither could she.

"Liz?" Laura said, her tone inquiring.

"Uh, scanning," Elizabeth replied as her hand danced across a keyboard. "Got it. There are two hundred plus blips inbound at…" She broke off and turned to Clarence. "How can you even see that? They're still over the horizon and flying close to the ground too."

"I got good eyes?" Clarence replied evasively.

"Are these guys going to attack us too?" Laura asked rhetorically. The question was rhetorical because she well knew that there were only two ways to actually determine intention. The camp had no telepaths, so someone was going to have to go out and actually meet them. Still, the ground hugging flight suggested an attempt at stealth, which suggested less than friendly intentions.

"Their numbers would suggest so," Karen replied, apparently thinking along the same lines as Laura. "We can't let them get close. If they attack, I can't protect the whole camp. Someone needs to go and intercept them and find out their intentions. Clarence, can you fly?"

Clarence paled. "I... I get airsick," he stammered.

"I guess it's up to me then," Karen said. She flexed her knees. "I'll be right back."

* * *

"Fascinating," Baltar commented as yet another load of crates and people were jumped out. "That's a site to site FTL jump. I wonder how far they're being sent."

"But that should be impossible, right?" Crashdown asked. "It's… it's like science fiction or something."

"Oh, it's theoretically possible," Tyrol added. "The biggest block to developing the technology is that you have to establish real time, two-way communication between the sender and the receiver. But over any practical distance, it's usually cheaper and easier to build a ship…"

All the Colonials turned to stare at Tyrol.

"What?" Tyrol huffed. "So I read a little science fiction every now and then…"

"Yes, well, be that as it may," Baltar said loudly, sounding a bit miffed. "I should note that the core of their transportation system appears to be part of the surrounding ruins. That stone platform thing is obviously old…"

"It's the Altar of the Gods," Specialist Tarn interjected. At everyone's look, he continued. "It matches the description in the Sacred Scrolls: a raised platform of stone upon which the gods would take sacrifices to Olympus and through which the gods would some times come to walk among mortal man."

"Oh please," Baltar scoffed. There seemed to be some commotion among their hosts, but Baltar ignored it. "It's just an alternative means of faster than light transport. What? Do you think these people are…"

One of their hosts, a rather attractive blonde woman who Baltar had been keeping an eye on - suddenly crouched down and jumped. Instead of obeying gravity and coming back down, she kept going up. Her ascent stopped at about a hundred feet and then she shot off to the side at such speed that she left behind a sonic boom.

"…gods?" Baltar finished with a croak.

* * *

"Ten minutes until the Raiders are in visual range," Five noted.

"How are the connections holding up?" Eight asked.

"Looks good," One replied. "It's a pity we won't be able to record any of this for the others. Of course, if we still had our Basestar…"

"One, just stuff it already."

Without a Basestar to provide support systems, the Cylons had to throw together an ad hoc control network to direct the attack on the human camp. Using only what communication abilities they had been originally been built with, it had turned out to take surprisingly little resources for three humanoid Cylons to control the small army of Raiders and Centurions. The only thing that they had needed to improvise was a communications relay to keep them in contact with the attack force; one Raider pulled from the attack force had sufficed for that.

"I think the attack force has been noticed," Five said. "The humans have launched some kind of missile at them."

"Only one missile?" One said contemptuously. "I would have thought they'd be better armed than that."

"There's something strange here," Eight added. "There's no heat signature and that speed is way too high to be a pure gravity drive…"

"Hey, the missile's stopping and…" Five trailed off as he and the others received a visual of the "missile" from the Raiders. "That's impossible."

A woman hovered in mid-air just ahead of the body of Raiders. Dressed in grey and white and with long blonde hair streaming in the wind, there appeared to be nothing keeping her airborne. And yet there she hovered as if gravity had no purchase on her at all.

A radio transmission was detected coming from her, its contents entirely meaningless. Or at least they appeared meaningless…

"She must be trying to hack us!" One suddenly concluded, startling the others. "Attack!"

"But…" Eight began. Whether she intended protest or caution, it was too late either way.

The Raiders reacted to the command and opened fire with their guns on the flying human. Blue tracers reached out towards her… and bounced off a barrier that was all but invisible, seen only in the mass of circular ripples that each impact generated. Still, the woman staggered back as if struck anyway. That was encouraging. Perhaps the Raiders' combined fire could bring down that invisible shield.

Then almost faster than the Cylons could track, the Raiders were firing on empty air. The flying woman had moved aside faster than the Raiders could turn and track her. The watching humanoid Cylons barely registered the change when the first Raider was blown out of the air.

* * *

"Uh, Apollo, we have a problem," Racetrack announced as buffeting from atmospheric entry died down.

"What is it, Racetrack?" asked Captain Lee Adama. His call sign was Apollo, and most of the pilots in the Colonial Fleet called him that. Currently, he was leading a force of two Raptors to Kobol to rescue downed comrades despite being technically under arrest for mutiny against the military chain of command during an illegal coup d'etat.

Yeah, Lee's life was complicated. The last thing he wanted was more problems.

"There are about two hundred Raiders swarming around crash site," Racetrack reported.

"Dammit, Racetrack, I thought you said the Basestar was destroyed," Lee growled. There was no way that two Raptors were going to fend off two hundred Cylon Raiders.

"It was, sir," Racetrack replied. "I guess these are the survivors… huh, that's weird."

"What is?"

"Something's just destroyed two Raiders and… two more just got blown away," Racetrack told him, her voice growing incredulous. "The Raiders have changed formation. It's weird, but it looks like they're in a dog fight, but I'm not reading any… wait, I'm getting some kind of high speed… I don't know what it is, sir, but it's tearing up the Raiders something fierce."

"Have the Raiders noticed us?" Apollo asked as his mind raced.

"Um, I don't think so," Racetrack replied. "It looks like they have more important problems to deal with."

"Okay them, we're going in," Apollo said decisively. "Let's see if we can get our people while they're distracted.

* * *

One watched amazed and not a little fearful as the Raiders were blown away one by one. The Raiders returned fire as best they could, but even as he watched, the grey and white blur just maneuvered in and around and even through streams of tracers with ridiculous ease. The only saving grace was that she… it… whatever that flying "human" was could only destroy a few Raiders at a time. That was scant comfort as there was apparently little the Raiders could do in return.

"Frak this," Eight growled. "Forget the… the whatever-she-is! Tell the Raiders to hit the camp while we still have Raiders in the air."

"What…" Five began.

"If the humans had more of… those, they would have used them," Eight said quickly. "That must mean the camp's vulnerable."

"Got it," One said, understanding. He sent the orders. As one, the Raiders turned, ignoring the woman harassing them, and headed for the human camp. One noticed something else. "Hey, look at this! The Heavy Raiders with the Centurions had gone on ahead while the fighters were distracted."

"Well thank God something's gone right," Eight sighed.

* * *

As Centurion bullets filled the air, Tyrol dived for the nearest cover – in this case, the moldering remains of an ancient wall – and desperately wished that he still had a gun. Unfortunately, their "hosts" as Baltar had called them hadn't seen fit to leave the Colonials with any guns.

The Centurion attack had been almost a complete surprise. Or maybe it was only a surprise for the Colonials. The people here had obviously known something was coming, because they had tried to get the Colonials under cover. Unfortunately, the lack of a mutually understandable tongue had prevented the Colonials from cooperating until it was too late.

The battle seemed to pass in weird still snapshots for Tyrol.

Image: Tarn going down riddled with bullets.

Image: Cally down with one of the soldiers on top of her, shielding her with his body as he returned fire. Each burst brought down a Centurion.

Image: The swordsman appearing and disappearing. His every appearance destroyed a Centurion with a slice of his blade.

Image: A scrawny kid among the Centurions, using one of the Toasters as a club to smash the others.

Image: One of their hosts, also down while another tried to render emergency aid.

Image: Centurions firing on the technical station connected to the Altar. Their bullets were simply frozen in mid-flight right in front of the girl who worked there. The girl herself was drawing glowing runes in the air.

Image: The empty Altar lighting up. One jump flash later and a man and a woman stood on the platform.

Image: Centurion fired on the new arrivals.

* * *

"What the hell?" Rodney yelped as Eve tripped him and they both went flat. A spray of bullets whipped through the space they had just been occupying. "Eve, what's going on?"

"Firefight, Rod," Eve replied simply.

"I can see that. And don't cal me 'Rod'," Rodney said, annoyed. He zapped a robot shooting at them with a lightning bolt. "I just wasn't expecting to fight right away."

"Why not? I said I might need a bodyguard."

"I'm sorry, but some of us aren't omniscient," Rodney told her in annoyance as he stood up. More bullets came at him, but now that he was expecting it, Rodney just blocked them with an electrical shield. Physics minded observers in the past had pointed out that Rodney shouldn't have been able to block non-ferrous objects with an electromagnetic barrier, but he never paid them any attention. He zapped another robot. "Any tactical suggestions?"

"Yes, look to your right and up about thirty degrees." Rodney did so and saw some growing specks in the air. "Those are hostile," Even went on. "They've got enough guns and bombs on them to kill everyone here who isn't bullet proof in a single pass. You've got… fifteen seconds to make a decision."

"But…" Rodney began. For most of his career, Rodney had gotten by with pretending that he was less powerful than he actually was. Most everyone thought he was only a Beta, an electrokinetic who could manipulate computers and maybe toss around a few lightning bolts on occasion. But stopping all those fighters would require more than a Beta's firepower. If he stopped them all in front of witnesses before they could do anything, he'd be reclassified as an Alpha at the very least. The classification carried with it certain obligations and restrictions he didn't like and preferred to avoid.

"Ten seconds."

"Dammit, Eve," he muttered, looking around. Rodney's eyes fell on a man writhing on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

"Five."

"Screw it," Rodney said as he raised a finger heaven-ward.

The incoming Raiders opened fire. The man sometimes called Lightning Rod answered in kind.

* * *

"Lords preserve us," Lee Adama swore in awe. Normally, he wasn't religious or prone to blasphemy, but this…

The Raptors had dropped low enough to spot the camp that seemed to be the Raiders' objective. But the Raiders got there first and opened fire. Apollo had expected that the Raiders would destroy the camp and silently cursed that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

But then, lightning had crawled back up the stream of tracers, leaving strings of little fireballs as the bullets were instantly converted into plasma. Then the lighting reached the lead Raiders and they too exploded. Unsatisfied, the lightning leapt from Raider to Raider in an orgy of destruction until not a single Cylon flyer was left in the air. All in all, the whole chain reaction took barely a couple seconds to complete.

Lee was still staring at the expanding fireballs when there was a thump. His view was suddenly blocked by a woman in white and grey standing on the nose of his Raptor. She looked pissed.

* * *

Tarn knew he was dying. He was in extreme pain. He could feel his life draining away. The world was growing dark and distant. And above him stood a man wrapped in a nimbus of writhing lightning. This could be only one person.

"Zeus…" he whispered.


	6. Issue 5: Gods Among Men

Clouds of free electrons swirled around Rodney, stripped from the constituent atoms of the bullets fired by attacking fighters

Clouds of free electrons swirled around Rodney, stripped from the constituent atoms of the bullets fired by attacking fighters. Rodney had expended a bit – a tiny bit – of them to destroy the attacking fighters. That left him with the rest and he was having trouble deciding what to do with them. If he simply let them go, everyone in the camp would probably be fatally electrocuted as the electrons grounded themselves. If Rodney kept the electrons wrapped around himself, the electrons would bleed away as air resistance converted them into light and heat; but that would take an aggravatingly long time.

"Hey, Eve," Rodney called out. "I've got a bit of excess power here. Is there any safe place to dump it?"

"Gee, I don't know, Rod," Eve replied in that you're-being-stupid tone of hers. She waved her hand at a nearby robot and it fell over backwards, the guns built into its arms spraying harmlessly into the air. As it was getting back up, it froze as Rodney cut power to its servos with a thought. "How about using it on the guys that are _shooting at us_?!"

"Huh? Oh right."

KRACKOOOM!!

**Cradle of the Gods  
Issue #5: Gods Among Men**

Gaius Baltar looked on with eyes wide as a being out of myth and legend laid waste to the attacking Cylon Centurions. The man – if man he was – threw lightning and every bolt blasted whole groups of Centurions. The Centurions attempted to reply with mere guns, but their fire was worse than ineffective. The Centurions' shift in targets allowed the more mortal defenders to attack without fear of return fire.

"Impressive, isn't he, Gaius?" a familiar, feminine voice whispered to him. Out of the corner of his eye, Gaius spotted the familiar form of Six. She stood erect at his side, utterly unconcerned with all the bullets and lightning bolts being slung back and forth. That was in a large part because she was a mental projection created by a Cylon chip in his head, a mental copy of the Cylon Baltar had known back before the Cylons had attacked the Twelve Colonies. And because she wasn't actually present, Six could get away with wearing one of her revealing red dresses no matter how inappropriate the location.

"I thought the Lords of Kobol were supposed to be false gods!" Baltar gasped as he tried to both see everything and hug the ground to evade the back and forth fire at the same time.

"The Lords of Kobol were false gods," Six replied. She seemed puzzled by Baltar's statement.

"Then what about him?" Baltar pointed to the lightning wreathed man dropping thunderbolts among the Centurions.

"What about him?" Six asked with a shrug. "He's hardly a god."

"Then what is he?"

"That," Six said with a mysterious smile, "you'll have to ask them." Her head turned to take in the battle. "Ah, I believe the action is winding down."

* * *

"Thanks for your timely arrival," Laura Jones was saying to Eve Shields as Karen landed next to them. "It was lucky that you brought your friend along. We might have really been in trouble otherwise."

"It wasn't luck," Eve replied. "I just knew that I was going to need some help in the fire power department." She looked at Karen. "By the way, that's going to be added to my bill."

"Of course it is," Karen said with a long suffering sigh. "You want a tip with that too?"

"Of course I do, but you're not going to add one," Eve said. She nodded at the two aircraft setting down nearby. Several of the surviving mercenary guards were watching the new arrivals closely. "Have you been making friends?"

"Hardly," Karen snorted. "I found them trying to sneak up on our rear while the drones had us occupied. They must be working together."

"Actually, I don't think they are," Eve disagreed. "I think they're the enemies of whoever controls these drones."

"You think?" Karen echoed with an inquiring tone. "You don't know?"

"That's not to say they're friendly," Eve continued, utterly ignoring Karen's question. "These are the guys who detonated the nuke you guys detected after all."

"We didn't tell you about the nuke," Laura said, startled.

"You didn't need to," Eve replied as she walked off. "I'll let you know more later."

The two women watched as Eve made her way towards the strangers.

"How did she…" Laura began.

"Don't even bother asking, Laura," Karen interrupted. "Miss Shields would never give away her trade secrets after all."

* * *

"What the frak happened?" Eight demanded.

"I don't know," One replied. "All the transmissions from the Raiders just stopped."

"The Centurions all went offline too, but not all at once," Five added. "The humans used some kind of lightning weapon and… wait, one of the Centurions is still transmitting."

"Let me see!"

Eight and One switched over to the Centurion data feed.

"This is weird," Eight commented. "All of the Centurion's motor functions have frozen, but the monitors aren't registering any damage. It's like none of the servos are getting any power."

"Well, the sensors are working fine," One noted. "Let's see what's going on… What the hell?"

Leaning over the Centurion was a man. The Cylons would have called him a human except that his eyes glowed with electrical sparks and more sparks danced across his body. He appeared to be examining the Centurion. And that was when they felt the tickle of an unorthodox data probe feeling its way towards them.

"Frak! We're being hacked!" Five said unnecessarily.

"Cut the connection! Cut the connection!" One ordered frantically.

* * *

The bodies of the dead were lined up neatly, their forms covered by thin sheets. Some belonged to the locals, but a few were Colonials. Among their casualties Crashdown and Tarn, hit by the opening volley that the Centurions used to announce their presence.

Tyrol shook his head. Despite knowing better, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible for all this. It was probably survivor's guilt, some rational part of him realized. Still, he couldn't just shrug off his feelings no matter how irrational they looked on the surface.

"Chief?" Tyrol looked up at being called. There was Captain Lee Adama wearing marine combat gear flanked by two marines. They all looked as punchy as Tyrol felt. Although Captain Adama was looking at Tyrol, his marine escorts were openly gawking at the man who had rained lightning down on the Centurions.

"Sir," Tyrol acknowledged. He searched for something appropriate to say. "You came."

"Yeah, we did," Captain Adama replied. His eyes flicked to the bodies. "What happened here?"

"We got shot down," Tyrol reported simply. "Then these people… rescued us, I guess. And then the Cylons attacked. I guess you saw the tail end of that."

"That we did, Chief," Captain Adama said softly.

"Thanks for coming to get us, sir," Tyrol added.

"Yeah, about that, Chief," Captain Adama said, looking at Tyrol strangely. "You're under arrest."

"Arrest?" Tyrol said, startled. "What for, sir?"

"On suspicion of…" Captain Adama paused, then nudged his escorts to get their attention. "Hey, you two! Get a move on!"

"Sorry, sir," the marines replied in a jumbled, out of sync chorus as they moved to restrain Tyrol.

"Anyway, Chief, you're under arrest on suspicion of being a…" Captain Adama trailed off again as someone walked up to them. Tyrol and the marines turned to get a better look at the new arrival.

She looked like Boomer.

"Cylon!" Adama cried as he and he marines went for their weapons.

* * *

"Well darn," Rodney said, disappointed. "They were quick on the uptake."

"Learn anything, sir?" the local MageSoft tech asked him.

"These robots were reporting back to someone," Rodney said absently. "They felt like human minds with direct neural connections. They cut the link before I could get much though."

"Oh, that's too bad," the tech replied.

"Y'know, the neural net architecture for these things is weird," Rodney mused as he continued to poke around inside what passed for the robot's mind. "Have you looked at it yet?"

"No, sir," the tech replied regretfully. What was her name again? "I've been too busy running the summoning circle back to Earth. How are they weird?"

"It looks like these robots were designed to be sentient, but there's something disrupting the formation of self awareness," Rodney explained. "I think it's a hardware issue and that's what makes no sense. Why design them this way? Why not just make them non-sentient from the ground up?"

Before the tech could reply, some shouting nearby grabbed their attention.

* * *

She looked like Boomer.

Even as Lee drew his weapon, he dimly realized that this woman didn't really look like Boomer. While she had the same straight black hair and the almond shaped eyes, she was also a bit taller and her facial features were noticeably different. Still, the almond shaped eyes were extremely rare in the Twelve Colonies. Sharon Valerii was the only person Lee had ever met who had them and she had proven herself to be a Cylon.

And now here was another one. Leveling his weapon at the woman's face, Lee realized that the woman might not be a Cylon. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry.

"Hold it right there!" Lee ordered the woman.

The woman's reaction wasn't what he expected. She rolled her eyes, expressing pretty clearly her annoyance at and contempt for his actions. She wasn't afraid at all of the three weapons pointed at her. She returned Lee's glare.

And then Lee's weapon fell apart. Of their own will, the magazine dropped out while at the same time the slide slid back and popped off, ejecting the chambered bullet. The marines' larger weapons did much the same thing. Lee and the marines found themselves holding pistol grips and little else.

Lee barely had time to gape before he felt something cold and very, very sharp pressed to his next. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a man in some strangely patterned green and brown suit holding the handle a very long blade. Not only that, the man also had almond shaped eyes. Where had this guy come from?

"Uh, sir," Tyrol said. Despite being handcuffed, he spoke deferentially. "I don't think it's a good idea to offend our hosts."


	7. Issue 6: Learning the Lingo

"What are you doing with that drone

"Mister Zachariah, that was an impressive display of… what are you doing with that drone?"

Rodney turned from where he was manhandling the intact robot onto the summoning circle. A somewhat familiar and statuesque blonde in white and grey was standing next to him. Having met her on previous occasions, Rodney was vaguely aware that she and her husband were big clients of his company's services. Unfortunately, Rodney couldn't recall her name at the moment, so he fell back on the well practiced habit of never using anyone's names. That always worked well until someone asked him, "Who was that?"

"Oh, uh, I'm taking this thing home to tinker with," Rodney replied.

"Why would you want to do that?" the woman asked. "It's just a cheap drone like any other, and not a very well designed one to boot."

"It's got some interesting features," Rodney old her with a shrug.

"Hmm, you know that my husband's company owns the contract for this dig?" the woman continued. "That means that everything recovered here belongs to him and by extension, me?"

"Huh, really?" Rodney said. He shrugged. "Okay, then just mark this thing off as our fee."

"Your whole fee?" the woman said, seemingly surprised.

"Sure, why not?" Rodney continued. "Just talk to Eve about the details. She usually handles all the business and finance stuff anyway."

"Oh, I do believe I will," the woman said with a wide smile. Gosh she was pretty. Too bad she was already married. What was her name again?

**Cradle of the Gods  
****Issue #6: Learning the Lingo**

Lee Adama sat on a rock. Well, actually, the rock was a moldering, ancient stone pillar knocked on its side. Opposite him sat the woman who looked a little bit like Boomer. She had simply pointed at herself and said "Eve". Lee assumed that was her name. Having pulled his gun on her, Lee had expected at the very least a rigorous interrogation. Instead, they sat staring at each other for the last five minutes.

They were alone, in as much that they sat out under the open sky in full view of everyone. Chief Tyrol and the marines had been more or less dismissed, sent off to join the rest of the Colonials by the grounded Raptors. The man who had held the sword to Lee's throat was nowhere to be seen; but then again, Lee hadn't seen him come or go. For all Lee knew, the swordsman was completely invisible and standing right next to him.

That left Eve, who was not saying a single word and staring at him with an armor piercing stare. It was unnerving.

"Look, uh, I'm sorry about the gun," Lee said finally. "It's just that you look a lot like a Cylon I know."

Eve just continued to stare at him.

"So who are you guys?" Lee asked. "You're not really Cylons, are you?"

Eve just continued to stare at him.

"Look, do you talk at all?" That was a silly question of course. Eve had already given a few short, sharp commands to the swordsman earlier. The problem was that Lee had no idea what she had said.

"Quiet!" Eve replied. The single word was spoken sharply, rather a lot like Lee's primary school teacher.

* * *

"The Chief's not a Cylon!" Cally protested desperately. "He can't be a Cylon!"

"You weren't there," Racetrack argued. "You didn't see Boomer just up and shoot the Old Man out of the blue. And everyone knows that Boomer and the Chief were involved…"

"That just means the Chief was tricked," Cally insisted. "Cylons do that, you know. Doc, tell them that."

"Actually, I think we need to be a bit cautious here…" Baltar began.

"Why don't we ask the gods?" Seelix interjected.

"I'm sorry, what?" Baltar said, thrown by the interruption. "What gods? If I recall correctly, the gods aren't in the habit of answering prayers with straight up, unambiguous answers."

"Well, there's Zeus right over there," Seelix said, pointing at the young man that had been throwing around lightning earlier. He looked singularly unremarkable if you ignored the fact that you could see his eyes glowing even from by the Raptors.

"Zeus?" Racetrack said surprised. "What makes you think he's Zeus?"

"This is Kobol, home of the Gods, right?" Seelix said. "Well, there's a guy over there that wields lightning and protected us… most of us anyway, from the Cylons. He also arrived in the middle of the battle through the Altar of the Gods. Ergo, he must be Zeus."

"Okay, he's not Zeus," Baltar said. "He's… he's just a human," he paused, as if listening to something only he could hear. "Yes, he's a human being with… a few tricks… and abilities that we… we haven't seen before. Yes, that's it."

"You just made that up just now," Seelix said accusingly.

"That doesn't invalidate my argument," Baltar replied.

"Well, if he is Zeus," Cally mused aloud, "then he could tell us if the Chief is a Cylon or not, right? I say we go ask him."

"Oh, come on," Baltar said, exasperated. "He's not Zeus!"

"I dunno," Racetrack said thoughtfully. "That woman he's talking to managed to fly without any apparent means of lifting off. If these guys aren't gods, I don't think they're human either. If they're human, then…" Racetrack paused as she groped for the most outrageous analogy she could think of, "then Colonel Tigh is a Cylon too."

* * *

"_Cylon! Hold it right there!"_

He was called "Lee", "Apollo", or "Captain Adama". He was military, a pilot pressed into other duties. He was a hero, a mutineer, a brother, a faithful and disobedient son. But for Eve Shields, the most important thing right now was that he was a Leader, the one the other visitors would most unambiguously listen too and take orders from.

That was why Eve had singled him out.

"_What are you doing?" demanded a bald man in uniform as Lee held a gun to his head._

Obsessed with measuring things and classifying them, humans had naturally attempted to create ways to measure supers against one another. The most popular one was the American standard scale which basically measured a super by his or her firepower. In Eve's opinion, the scale was seriously deficient because there were so many ways to measure power other than sheer destructiveness. Eve was a mere Gamma on that scale, but within her specialty, no other super could match her.

"_Galactica, Apollo," Lee called as the fireball blossomed on the asteroid behind his fleeing Viper. "Mission… accomplished! Tell Baltar that he was right on the money!"_

Back before Eve had been born, there had been a scare when everyone thought supers were some new evolving master race. Back then, supers had been classified by "Origin". On the bad guy side had been the Mutants, those born with powers; back then, Eve would have fallen into this category. On humanity's side were the Accidents and Artificials, the ones who got powers through Science. But science had marched on and shown that not only did all powers stem from the same, mysterious source, it also proved that there was no genetic difference between "normal" humans and supers of any origin. In fact, a majority of the population were actually latent supers, most of whom never manifested powers at all.

Eve disagreed. Her own power told her that most so-called latents did manifest powers. But their abilities were so weak and subtle that most people never realized that they had powers at all.

"_I think she's wrong," Lee was saying. "I think we have had time to deal with Zak's death."_

"_I haven't," replied the older man he had been walking beside._

Then there was the third scale. It measured a super not by fire power or origin, but by what he could actually do. It still wasn't perfect, but Eve regarded it as the best one. Of course, it helped that Eve's company's entire business revolved around matching a super's powers to the jobs they were most suited for.

Some supers like Rodney or Karen Anderson, got their high degree of firepower through severe specialization: Rodney controlled electrons and only electrons; Mrs. Anderson shaped inertial forces with all the subtlety of a baseball bat.

By contrast, Eve was a generalist, her strength divided up among numerous psionic abilities. She had telekinesis; but while Eve could levitate, she couldn't throw a telekinetic punch more powerful than a human could kick. Her telepathy was a joke, barely adequate to read surface thoughts, and only if the thoughts were in a language she already understood.

"_Lee, your father didn't get Zak killed," said the woman sitting in a Viper's cockpit. "I did."_

No, that wasn't quite true. Eve did have a specialized power. She was the most powerful psychometrist that she knew of. A psychometrist was a super who could take an object and read bits and pieces of its past history. But where as most psychometrists needed physical contact and concentration to use their power, Eve didn't. Eve could glean far more detailed historical information about a person or object merely by looking. Not only that, she could almost instinctively put the raw data together into a coherent picture and draw conclusive information from it.

"_Adama is it? Son of William Adama? Well lookee here, boys and girls, we got ourselves one high and mighty nugget here. You probably think you're the son of Zeus, don't you, Nugget?"_

"_No, sir…" Lee began, but was cut off._

"_Yeah, son of Zeus. Okay, nugget, your call sign from now on is 'Apollo'…"_

So here Eve was, trying to learn a foreign language from a guy who apparently had never been around English speakers before. For that matter, as Eve probed his past, he had never even been to Earth. Lee Adama's past was filled with conversations in gibberish, text in incomprehensible lettering, and customs that were at once familiar and alien.

But there was a way around that. Eve just had to probe very, very far back.

"_Gamma is for Galactica. Can you say Galactica, Lee?"_

"_Galaga!" repeated the very young and very little Lee Adama._

Ah, this looked about right.

* * *

"I'm going to go ask Zeus to give us his wisdom," Cally decided aloud.

"What? You don't even know if he can understand you," Baltar replied. "We haven't been able to understand anyone here. I think their dialect's drifted a lot in the past two thousand years. Oh, and that's not Zeus."

"It is Zeus," Seelix insisted. "And it's more likely that our dialect has drifted more than his."

"And even if he's not Zeus, he's got to be a god of some sort, right?" Cally said thoughtfully. "Therefore, he should be able to understand me regardless of how much our dialect has drifted. He'll understand us."

"You're making some rather unwarranted assumptions here…" Baltar began.

"Okay, let me stop this right now," Racetrack interrupted. "No one is going anywhere or talking to anyone not a Colonial. No offense Cally, but god or not, I really don't want to risk provoking a guy who can swat Cylon Raiders out of the sky like he did."

"But, ma'am…"

"No buts, Cally," Racetrack said firmly. "When Apollo… er, Captain Adama gets back, we'll put the question to him. He'll decide what to do." She looked over to where Adama was sitting. He must be in deep conversation with that woman; he almost certainly wouldn't just be sitting there doing nothing all this time.

* * *

"Captain Lee Adama, callsign Apollo," Eve said finally. "Welcome to Kobol."

"Er, thanks," Lee said cautiously. Her accent was horrible and barely understandable, but at least she was speaking.

"You're here to rescue your people who had been shot down by your enemies, the Cylons," Eve continued. Even as she spoke, her accent improved noticeably. "Also, you think that one of these people you're here to 'rescue' is in fact one of these Cylons despite possessing no evidence supporting a conclusion based on paranoia, grief, anger, and an emotional need for revenge."

"Er, yes," Lee said lamely. What else could he say? Wait; there was something he could say. "Who are you people and how do you know so much about us? Are you Cylons?"

"Well, in reverse order," Eve said, now looking a bit embarrassed. "No. How I know so much about you is my little trade secret. As for who we are, we're people from the place you guys are trying to find: Earth."

"You're from the Thirteenth Colony?" Lee asked in surprise.

"No, we're from Earth," Eve corrected. "Although there are other worlds that call themselves 'Earth' – the one with the cat people and the mummy with delusions of grandeur come to mind – the Earth I'm from has never been anyone's colony so far as I know. The Earth your people are looking for might not be our Earth."

"Oh." Lee turned that over in his mind. The explanation made no sense to him at all. Cat people? "Look, if you really are from Earth, my people need help. We're on the run. We need refuge. Can you help us?"

"No."

"What? Why not?"

"For one, I have no authority to be giving your people asylum or anything," Eve told him. "And on the flip side, you have no authority to be asking it either even if your little fleet wasn't going through a military coup." She beamed at Lee. "But, hey, I'll put in a good word for you."

* * *

"What's the word, sir?" Racetrack asked as Captain Adama rejoined the Colonials.

"These people are… strange," Adama replied. He shook his head. "I'll tell you about it on the way back to Galactica."

"That's one way to put it," Six commented with a laugh.

"We can't leave yet, sir," Cally interrupted. "We have to get Zeus to verify the Chief's innocence!"

"Zeus?" Adama replied, confused. "What Zeus? Who's Zeus?"

"Y'know, sir, Zeus the Lord of Kobol," Seelix added. She pointed. "He's right over there."

"Look, they're not gods," Baltar repeated with exasperation.

"That's right, Gaius," Six said encouragingly. "Show them how false their gods are."

"Gods, huh?" Adama said thoughtfully. "That… would explain a lot, actually."

"So we can get one of them to verify that the Chief's not a Cylon, right sir?" Cally asked.

"Hmm, I think we'll ask them that later," Adama said slowly. "I'm not sure we should bother them with this. I've already asked them to give the Fleet refuge."

"They don't deserve refuge," Six scoffed. "All of you are sinners deserving of punishment."

"What did they say about it?" Baltar asked, ignoring her.

"They'll think it over," Adama replied. "I'd just as soon not aggravate them with trivia."

"The Chief is not trivia!" Cally objected.

* * *

"Miss Shields, welcome back," Karen greeted as Eve Shields joined them. Eve was rubbing the bridge of her nose and barely looking where she was going. "Are you all right?"

"Ugh, learning a whole new language under an hour isn't what I call relaxing," Eve replied. She looked up. "These people are sorely in need of help and…" She trailed off as her eyes locked on Karen's. They widened in shock, then whipped over to her partner. "Rodney! What did you do?"

"Huh? What?" Rodney said, startled.

"You… you took a stupid drone as payment?!" Eve sputtered. "Our _entire_ payment? What the hell were you thinking?"

"What's wrong with that?" Rodney said defensively. "I am your partner, you know."

"Right, and you have no idea how much you just screwed us over!"

"Hey, now…"

Karen settled back to watch the ensueing fireworks, quite thoroughly amused. She could afford to be, after all.

* * *

"Okay, that doesn't look good," Lee observed as the distant argument broke out between Eve and "Zeus".

"I'm guessing this means no refuge?" Baltar asked.

"Given how much firepower these guys can throw around, I don't think we want to stick around to find out," Lee concluded. He raised his voice. "Everyone in the Raptors now! We're lifting off, ASAP!"


End file.
